Stalking horse or tried stayer?

Andrew Clennell and Alexandra Smith report on the premiership
prospects of a contender who just squeezed into Parliament.

It was a crazy bet. Nathan Rees was an accomplished
long-distance runner, known to cycle up to 1000 kilometres a week,
and had finished third in a state triathlon. But swimming was not
his strongest suit. So when his mate, Mick Chouefaite, told him a
worthy long-distance swimmer should complete a kilometre in 20
minutes, Rees's ears pricked up at the challenge.

Rees offered a $5000 wager he could make the time, the story
goes, but Chouefaite thought Rees had no chance and was being
reckless on his university student's income, and the stakes were
lowered to a meal. Rees trained solidly for a week and, at a
Westmead primary school, completed the 20 laps with 25 seconds to
spare.

His friends recall it now as a mark of Rees's determination. But
it might just as well illustrate how the challenges others regard
as unachievable, Nathan Rees does not.

Perhaps that is why, after little more than 15 months in State
Parliament and as a minister, Rees is happy to agree with Labor
Party head office officials to stand for the premiership, should
Morris Iemma be persuaded to stand down. The Minister for Water has
not denied the conversation, revealed by the Herald this
week.

MPs have reported to the Herald that over the past
fortnight, Labor's general secretary, Karl Bitar, has mentioned
Rees's name in earnest to MPs and attempted to persuade them Iemma
has to go if Labor is to have any chance of winning the March 2011
state election.

Iemma's going nowhere fast of his own accord. He said last week
he would not be forced out by a "psychological war" waged by his
party office but the push to get him out continues.

This week Rees pledged loyalty to Iemma, but significantly did
not deny ambition for the top job. He would not speculate or
comment on "hypotheticals", he told ABC radio.

But the question may be premature. Is the real intention of
Labor's backroom brigade to promote Rees as a stalking horse in
order to bring on a leadership spill ultimately intended to deliver
the premiership to someone more experienced? Possibly John Watkins,
the Deputy Premier and leader of the Labor left, or Carmel Tebbutt,
who stood down from the education ministry after the last election,
wanting to spend more time with her family. Or will Rees be the
last man standing - a kind of Steven Bradbury, the Australian speed
skater who thrilled his nation by winning gold at the 2002 Winter
Olympics after everyone ahead of him fell over.

Certainly, Rees is an unknown - a "cleanskin" as Iemma was
called when he took the job from the departing Bob Carr in 2005. Of
more than a 1000 Herald readers polled this week, just 31
per cent knew him as a Labor politician. Half as many thought he
was an AFL footballer, presumably confusing Rees with the
Collingwood champion Nathan Buckley. Half of those polled did not
know who he was.

The irony of the ALP's Sussex Street headquarters backing Rees
is not lost on some.

When the Parramatta MP, Tanya Gadiel, met Bitar last week in a
round of meetings in which MPs were urged to dump support for
Iemma, she ridiculed head office, telling Bitar that the man he and
his predecessor Mark Arbib were now painting as "the messiah" would
not even be in Parliament had it been left to them.

Gadiel is reported to have said Arbib had done a deal with the
left-wing powerbroker and federal MP Laurie Ferguson before the
state election in March last year to have Gadiel shift from
Parramatta to Toongabbie, and to install the Parramatta Lord Mayor,
David Borger, in Parramatta.

This would have caused Rees to miss out on a seat. But Gadiel,
who would not comment to the Herald for this story, would
have none of the seat swap and complained to Iemma. He threw in his
weight to have Rees, then his staffer, preselected as the
Toongabbie candidate by the party's national executive. Borger was
found the seat of Granville.

Rees was also lucky to get into the ministry, apparently winning
the last spot on the Left ticket.

Rees's use of language has helped elevate his profile. Early as
a minister, he was questioned by the Opposition on a sarcastic
remark he allegedly made to members of the Aboriginal Child Sexual
Assault Taskforce when he was chief of staff to a former minister
for Aboriginal affairs, the since disgraced and jailed Milton
Orkopoulos: "So we're worried about kiddie fiddlers, are we?"

After three months in Parliament, the Catholic Rees attracted
headlines when discussing stem-cell legislation by likening
Cardinal George Pell to "that serial boofhead Sheik al Hilaly" and
accused the Catholic Archbishop of engaging in "emotional
blackmail".

Rees was born in 1968, grew up in western Sydney and went to
Northmead High before starting an apprenticeship as a greenkeeper
with Parramatta Council. He later studied English literature at
Sydney University and worked as garbage collector to pay his
way.

His first job in politics was as an adviser to the former deputy
premier Andrew Refshauge, who his mother Frances had worked for. He
began in that role shortly after the Carr government was elected in
1995 and he went on to work for Craig Knowles and Iemma as health
ministers before being appointed chief of staff to Orkopoulos.

He shifted to the Premier's office in 2006, a few months before
Orkopoulos was charged, and had a reputation for being a strong,
forthright, savvy policy adviser who liked to get things done. In
his inaugural speech to Parliament last year, Rees, who was school
captain at Northmead, said he was the only one of 220 students in
his year who did not apply to study at university. He hated
studying, and made no secret of it. He wanted to leave after year
10 but his parents insisted he complete his Higher School
Certificate.

His mother, who works for the MP for Strathfield, Virginia
Judge, and has a long history in the Labor Party, says: "Nathan was
school captain, although he didn't actually tell me straightaway
and he made his sister promise not to tell me, either, and one day
the principal called me up to tell me Nathan hadn't been wearing
his school uniform.

"I said to Nathan that it would be a good thing to do to wear
his uniform but he said, 'No I can't do that. Some kids can't
afford school uniforms so I'm not wearing mine.'

"Nathan is unbelievably honest and incredibly loyal and ethical
and that is something I really admire in him."

Depending on who you talk to, Rees is someone who meets his
mother's description with determination, or an arrogant and
occasionally bullying big-mouth. Before addressing Parliament, he
moves to the dispatch box with the sort of swagger that suggests he
needs to be taken down a peg or two. Said a former senior
government staffer: "Wherever he could abuse the bureaucrats whose
job was to develop advice … he'd do so. [He had a] smart
tongue, [was] arrogant, to the point of being abusive."

A senior MP, and enemy of Rees, fired this shot: "If [federal
MP] Belinda Neal needs anger management, I think you need more
drastic measures for him. This is a very big problem for him; he
tends to lose it very easily."

A Left colleague, Lynda Voltz, says Rees is determined and holds
his "own views", but she plays down the reputation for arrogance.
"What, as opposed to [the Treasurer] Michael Costa?" Voltz
says.

Head office officials believe Rees has the self-belief required
in politics. One supporter says: "Nathan's background tells you
he's the type of guy who just rolls up his sleeves and gets on with
the job. He doesn't make excuses and he's prepared to ruffle a few
feathers to deliver on things he believes in." The Opposition
Leader, Barry O'Farrell, would have competition on his hands if
Rees were leader, the source says.

Certainly, Rees is a hands-on minister. An early task as the
Minister for Emergency Services was to visit flood-ravaged parts of
the Central Coast and the Hunter Valley a year ago. He ignored
officials' advice and took himself on a tour to Chittaway Point, a
Central Coast settlement he had been assured had no problems. Many
residents, he found, had not been seen by the SES, and he got on
the phone and ordered portable toilets to ease the problem of
blocked toilets. After the Blacktown storms in summer, Rees spent
two weekends doorknocking 1500 homes in the area. When he met the
insurance companies, Rees was able to dispute much of what they
were telling him - he had had the residents' stories.

Rees has always prided himself on being a "westie" - an
attractive proposition for a political party having to defend a
list of western Sydney marginal seats in 2011. When his mother and
father, Daryl, moved from the western suburbs to Marrickville more
than a decade ago, Rees refused to leave Toongabbie. "Live with
those inner-city trendies? Get real!" he told his mother. "I am a
westie."

Rees has been with his partner, Stacey Haines, for 18 years. She
works for the Immigration Department. They met as 14-year-olds at
Northmead High, when Rees played the "undertaker's pimply
apprentice in the school production of Oliver". They plan to
marry early next year.

Todd Smith trained with Rees for five years until injury and
work commitments ended their cycling careers in the 1990s. When
training for a race, they would ride every day and clock up 1000
kilometres a week. They would cycle more than 200 kilometres over
six hours on a Saturday. "He was a very, very good rider, an
A-level rider and very tough in the head," Smith says. "Nathan
never got to the professional level but he could have, given the
right circumstances and opportunities.

"He was very dedicated and very level-headed, a great guy to go
training with because Sydney is a hard place to ride and a few of
the guys would get worked up but Nathan would be the one defusing
the situation."

Smith said Rees was several times club champion at the
Parramatta Cycling Club and won open events across Sydney. As a
ministerial adviser he would ride from Bullaburra in the Blue
Mountains, where he lived for a period, to the city.

His mother says he became interested in politics because he was
raised in a working-class area, attending a working class school
"where he saw lots of inequities". Some kids missed out on school
events and facilities because their parents couldn't afford school
fees. "He would always take up the issue," Mrs Rees says. "He
didn't come through Young Labor, but he did join the party at an
early age [and] we haven't always agreed on things when it comes to
politics. We have had some robust discussions, shall we say, around
the dinner table. If people didn't know us, they might think from
some of our heated conversations that we don't get on, but we're
just both passionate."

The Left faction memberships of Rees, Watkins and Tebbutt might
once have automatically excluded them from a shot at the
premiership. But that is changing. Head office officials believe if
any one of the three is successful, they may be persuaded to quit
the Left and join the dominant Right, or follow Neville Wran as
unaligned.

Iemma has nominated Rees as a "future leader", and his abilities
are widely regarded. But some in the Iemma-Costa camp believe head
office is making a big mistake promoting him so early, because his
every move as minister will now be more closely scrutinised.

There is a slightly unrealistic feel about all the shadow
boxing, just as there was when Bronwyn Bishop was touted as a
federal Liberal leader in the early 1990s. And yet, punters are
enthused.

Sportingbet is offering $1.80 on Rees being premier on January
1, while Iemma is at $2.25 to remain in the job. Sounds like a
crazy bet.

1216163156859-smh.com.auhttp://www.smh.com.au/news/national/stalking-horse-or-tried-stayer/2008/07/18/1216163156859.htmlsmh.com.auSydney Morning Herald2008-07-19Stalking horse or tried stayer?Andrew Clennell and Alexandra Smith report on the premiership
prospects of a contender who just squeezed into Parliament.National